Something To Fight For
by kcatty
Summary: I stole the plot setup and sort of a few characters from the Inheritance Cycle, but it's as far away from the books as possible. (It's parody, you could say.) Also: I'm not doing NANOWRIMO cuz I'm really busy right now, so I can't guarantee that I can regularly update. It's a long story and I don't want to push myself.
1. Chapter One

It wasn't easy to escape from prison.

For one, the prison structure was built over a river that, only a few yards away, cascaded over a waterfall. The parapets overlooking the waterfall were purposefully low, to lure escaping prisoners to their deaths. Too many a man underestimated the fall, and the rocks below.

On the other side the parapets were higher, but the river flowed so fast that by the time a strong swimmer reached the banks, they were mere feet from the waterfall. Besides, Micah knew there were nets positioned under the prison, pulled tight against the river to capture any prisoner who dared attempt the swim.

The two sides of the prison – over the long bridge that held the prison over the water – were then the obvious points of escape. Thus the three separate outer walls, the small garrisons at every gate, and the searches of every cart coming into or leaving the prison. There was a dead zone between the last wall and the middle wall; anyone caught off the gate paths was shot immediately.

It all made the waterfall route more appealing.

* * *

Micah escaped at sunset.

Actually he'd escaped earlier, around noon. He was confined to a six-by-six foot cell with a thick, solid wooden door bolted through the middle with iron bars. It was a nice touch but it fractured the wood, and Micah knew the spell to embrittle the iron.

He blasted the door completely apart just after noon guard rounds.

Seven years ago Micah would not have done that. Seven years ago he would have stolen a guard uniform and slipped out in the middle of the night.

But a lot changes in seven years.

It was a very satisfying explosion. The door went flying away while simultaneously exploding every which way in the hallway. It was like the time they were fourteen and they destroyed the door to his father's study after he died. And everything in it.

Anyway. Micah stepped out into the hallway, his ears ringing from the explosion and his body aching from the spell. He hadn't used that much magic in a long time. He looked down both sides of the hallway, trying to figure out which way to go.

Guards came running from both directions. It was time to get out of there.

* * *

When Micah was younger, the men in his unit had nicknamed him "Spider". He loved to climb – he _could_ climb – anything and he'd do it twice as fast as anybody else, if magic wasn't allowed. Only one person could ever beat him using magic.

Even seven years of prison couldn't make him forget how to climb a stone wall.

He positioned himself on the ceiling of a high, narrow hallway that connected the balcony overlooking the waterfall with the Room of Last Rites inside the prison. The balcony was used for executions, see.

He'd executed a few prisoners himself on the balcony before he tried to escape the first time. It was his second chance; the king didn't give third chances.

A guard walked underneath him and through the door to the balcony.

"Well?" asked a man outside.

"The Captain says go ahead. The prisoner's not a threat around here."

"Right."

So Micah's suspicion was right: they were executing him today. At sunset, as usual.

The guard walked back down the hallway and turned a corner, out of sight. Micah dropped soundlessly onto the floor and charged through the door.

The first men to react were the two guards who held the prisoner: they rushed Micah, short swords drawn. He disarmed the one, then the other, with the old moves he had practiced over and over as a child with his father watching. Shouting. Slapping his face so he would listen-

The executioner assumed a fighting stance with his long blade. Micah, armed with two short swords from dead men, rushed him. He remembered this man, a larger version himself with stronger muscles and shorter arms. He had supervised Micah's first execution. He liked to swing; he did not like to move.

Micah loved to move.

With the last hostile dead, Micah paused to catch his breath. He ignored the prisoner still in chains and fashioned himself a jacket-holster made out of dead men's belts and sword straps.

"You gonna untie me?" asked the prisoner eventually. Micah turned around to look at him.

Metreos Scorio. Convicted of espionage and price-fixing, though his true crime was to not pay tithes of the extortion to the crown. Not enough to warrant execution, either; it was for the crimes Scorio committed inside the prison that put him on the balcony. The crimes that Micah convinced him to commit.

He stared at the other man with distaste. Scorio was a middleman, a ways to a means. Micah picked up the longsword and faced the prisoner.

"You know why you're here."

"For murdering the men you thought killed your mother? Paranoid little boy." He looked up at Micah. "Micah Gibeosin. Best murderer in all the six kingdoms, but you picked me to fight your battles," sneered Scorio.

"Murder is murder," Micah replied.

"You'd know a lot of that."

Micah heard shouts from above. The guards finally remembered there was an execution on the balcony. Time to go.

"Boy-"

Micah turned and slashed at Scorio's throat, deep enough to kill him but too shallow to do it quickly. He deserved that.

And then he climbed the wall.

* * *

Anisa watched the one man kill another on the prison ledge overlooking the waterfall. She saw the guards mass above them on the parapet, and the surviving prisoner climb the wall above the waterfall.

She watched the crossbowmen try to shoot the man on the wall. They couldn't hit him – the angle was too extreme – but they still tried. They didn't need to try. There were only two ways he would get off that wall, and neither of them ended well for him.

He seemed to realize this. After a couple minutes of stalemate, he climbed down. And let go.

She watched him fall past the waterfall and into the river below. It was easily a hundred feet, maybe more. Pity. She had been rooting for him.

She murmured a dying prayer for the faceless, nameless drowned man. She was too far away to see him, after all. She was too far away for anyone in that prison to see, unless they were looking for her. Then she murmured the counter-spell for telescopic vision. She had never been good at that spell anyway, so it was no surprise it had barely worked.

She turned away and walked back to her camp.

* * *

Gideon was reading when she got back: he sat in front of the fire and turned the spit every time he turned a page. Anisa knew that he'd heard her coming, because if she knew one thing about that boy, it was that he hated reading. Just like his father.

He made a show of closing the book, and stood up to greet her.

"Was there anything there?"

"No. It was a false alarm." Anisa collected the tarp and folded it, and packed it back into a bag.

"Luther's never been wrong-"

"Gideon." She turned to face him. "He has been wrong before, and there was nothing there."

Gideon sat back down. "Okay, I guess." He watched Anisa pack up the camp. "If it was a false alarm, then can we stay here tonight?"

Anisa shook her head and picked up their only pot; it was rusting through.

"Mom! This is the fourth camp this week!" he protested.

Anisa shoved the pot back into a bag. "I don't like it. I don't care if Luther was wrong. It gives me a bad feeling. I'm going to get him. Stay here."

Gideon started to say something, but checked himself. Anisa turned to him. "The rabbit looks well done. We can't travel with it."

He looked up from his book, into which he'd buried his head to avoid her. "You don't want any?"

She smiled. "You caught it, you eat it. Just don't let Luther see it."

He returned her smile, a little crooked grin that made her heart break. "Thanks, Mom."

Anisa walked away to get Luther. She couldn't let Gideon see her expression. He'd recognize it and his – and her – first good mood in weeks would vanish.

_Just keep moving_, she told herself.


	2. Chapter Two

There were six kingdoms, six different dialects and ethnic groups. Six regions of the continent separated by mountains, desert or forest. Six kingdoms held together more tenuously than the king would admit.

There were many things the king wouldn't admit; for example, that the raiders in the northern kingdom of Odden had become more powerful than the local militias, and that the army was holed up in the governor's town of Temersos because if it came out, the Independent Court at Oddenstown had threatened to call up the militias to fight. The Independent Court wanted a governor of Odden; the king wanted a lord of Odden.

Nor would King Ethieon listen to the rumors of new riders in Odden; the Independent Court denied the whispers; and the raiders had set a bounty for any news, gossip or not. It left Ethan in a precarious state.

* * *

The raiders set up camp just south of town, in the rocky ruins of the old village. The village center remained eerily intact despite being neglected for millennia; the weeds grew strong but never managed to penetrate the stone circle. It was Ethan's favorite haunt, and he hated to see it ruined by mercenaries.

Ethan waited in the trees all night, waiting till before sunrise to make his move. Overly cautious, Roshan would have said. Then again, Roshan had left home six years ago to make his own as a blacksmith. He came back five months later to marry his wife and bring their son home, and got into a worse-than-usual piss-drunk argument with his father; Ethan hadn't seen him since.

Roshan would have advocated storming the camp with only a smith's hammer for protection in the middle of the night. He and his father both loved to tell Ethan that he was too quiet, not assertive enough, not brash enough.

Ethan wasn't quiet; he was patient. And that patience would pay off in the morning.

He came down from the trees one last time to check the wires, stolen from the mayor's storerooms. Ethan had pulled them across the trees surrounding the old village, the first wires at ankle-level and the second at waist-level. He returned to his perch in a nearby tree and watched as the dark horizon lightened into blue, and the guards extinguished the watchfires.

He jumped onto the first guard who passed by. He broke his neck quickly and grabbed his sword. Other guards ran at the sound of their comrade collapsing on the leaves. Ethan's plan was working.

* * *

Twenty minutes later it was almost over. Ethan was multi-strategic: some of the raiders he set afire sleeping in their tents; others he faced one-on-one as they rushed half-awake to fight; and others still were caught by the wires, and dispatched easily by the spells he had cast. It didn't matter how they died so long as they did die.

He let the rest run away, through the one path not blocked by his wires. It led into a ravine blocked on the other side and too steep to climb. Ethan walked over to the closer side of the ravine and pushed the rock supporting the pile of boulders away, starting the avalanche that blocked the other exit from the ravine.

Ethan collapsed on the ground. He wouldn't admit it, but he was tired. Tired of fighting raiders, tired of quashing the rumors, tired of covering up his existence. He was a blacksmith's nephew and he would inherit the forges of Sofel, Odden, from his uncle. He wasn't supposed to have magic; he definitely wasn't supposed to be a Rider.

He looked up at the rising sun: it was obscured by smoke.

Sofel lay to the east of the forest. Towards the rising sun.

Ethan ran.


	3. Chapter Three

Micah saw the smoke from over the last mountain, and his spirits sank. Settlements were few and far between on the Northeast Ridge, and Micah was sure that Sofel was the last village before the Spine and the Bloody Shore. If it was destroyed…

Most people ran away from a burning village; Micah ran towards it.

He stopped on the hill that overlooked Sofel from the west. Most of the town was gone, the charred remains still smoldering; the streets were barely visible under all the wreckage. There was only one building still intact.

Movement caught his eye, and Micah saw them: a group of men massed around one lone fighter, at the edge of town.

Micah drew his short swords – he had lost the longsword when he fell into the river – and ran down the hill.

* * *

Ethan was desperate, surrounded and outnumbered; so he did the only thing he could do: he called Basina.

* * *

Micah had almost reached the mercenaries when he heard wings batting the wind; he saw the huge shadow cast across the rubble at the same time. He stumbled at the base of the hill and looked up.

Even in prison, he'd heard the rumors. Now he knew they were true.

A blue dragon swept down from the sky and roared, a powerful, thick sound that almost knocked Micah to the ground. It – he? she? – landed in front of the mercenaries. It roared again, this time spewing fire from its mouth.

The men screamed in pain and ran away, down the hill due east, hair and clothes alight, faces burning red.

The dragon turned toward Micah but didn't move. Micah walked slowly towards it; he kept his swords in his hands and looked the dragon straight in the eye. Maybe dragons could sense fear.

The lone fighter – the one who'd dropped to the ground as soon the dragon appeared – stood up. "She ain't a horse," he said.

Micah didn't take his eyes off the dragon. "What?"

The man – more of a boy, really – walked up beside the dragon. He rested one hand on – her? – huge front leg. "She ain't a horse. You're not impressing her by staring at her, you're just making her mad."

Micah looked away from the dragon. He noticed the boy held his sword ready at his side, and saw the blood a moment later. He stopped walking.

"You're injured."

The boy shifted his feet. "Yeah, and?"

Micah walked forward. "I know about–" The dragon growled. Micah stepped back. "I know how to treat battle wounds."

"You offering to help?" The boy glared at Micah and he rubbed his arm; his shirt sleeve was quickly turning a shiny red color.

"You're the only thing standing between that dragon and myself," said Micah, as if it were obvious, "and I would prefer to live."

The boy pointed east, into the woods, with his uninjured arm. "Kill the raiders."

Micah sighed and walked past the dragon, into the forest of the Spine.

* * *

Most of the mercenaries had already died. Micah knelt down at a stream in front of one of the corpses, dragon fire burning weakly under the water; he remembered reading about dragons and their magical fire. He whispered a spell and the flame extinguished. Micah stood up and followed the footsteps through the mud.

They screamed for forgiveness, mercy from their fates, love from their Maker. Micah gave them none of it.

Micah spat on the last body and walked back to Sofel.

* * *

Ethan watched Basina investigate the ruins of Sofel; it was the first time she had flown into the town. His mind replayed the last day: sneaking away from Gavriel, stealing the wires, trapping the raiders in their camp. Letting himself be distracted by the small camp force. Leaving Sofel defenseless against the brunt of the raiders.

Gavriel would have beat him bloody for his mistakes, but Gavriel was most likely dead. Ethan had to tell Roshan that his father was dead.

The other man reappeared after a while; Ethan didn't know long it had been. But his sword dripped with blood and the wild look in his eyes told Ethan enough. He dragged three dead raiders with him back to the ruined town and dumped them in front of Basina without saying a word.

He made Ethan sit down on the ground, pulled his sleeve back and hissed. Ethan fainted before he could ask what was wrong.


	4. Chapter Four

They camped out for the night in the woods south of Temersos. Luther had left hours ago to hunt, and to find a safer place for him to sleep than the flat terrain close to Odden's capital.

"I need you to find rosemary and sage," Anisa told her son after they set up camp. She pulled out the only intact bowl they had and rubbed ashes from the fire onto the inside surface.

"But you hate scrying-" protested Gideon. He was right, of course: Anisa could not scry well, and trying to do so would put her in a bad mood for days.

"I need to do it. We need direction," she said curtly.

Gideon sighed and went in search of the herbs. Anisa watched him go.

The truth was, Anisa didn't need rosemary and sage to scry. She needed to visit Temersos.

* * *

She knocked on the door six times. The boy who opened it stared at her. "Who're you?"

"I'm here to see your master."

The boy didn't move. "He ain't expecting you."

"Is that relevant?"

"He don't take adrupt visits-"

"Sevrea!" the boy's master said from behind him. "How are ye?"

"I'm tired, Sigon. Please tell me you have news for me."

The smuggler smiled his diplomatic smile. "How 'bout ye sit down." They sat. Sigon's assistant poured the drinks. "Sorry for my boy. I did'n know ye were comin'."

Anisa took a sip of the drink; she instinctively bit her tongue to stop herself from blacking out. Sigon looked at her curiously.

She coughed and cleared her throat. "Sassafras leaf. Very strong."

"Sarsaparilla," Sigon corrected. "From the zarza root. Is a regional drink."

"My mistake."

Sigon continued: "Would've baked ye rooibos beans from Temera if ye'd told me ye were visitin'."

"Sigon, you're noble-born. You're the governor's second lieutenant. Why do you insist-"

"Ye're askin' about my accent? It makes me more genuine." Anisa rolled her eyes. "Aw, c'mon, Sevrea. We're both noble-born. And bastard-born. Nobody'll trust ye with yer highborn talkin'." He winked at Anisa; she glared back.

"What's the news from the south?"

Sigon sighed, sat back and changed accents. Anything was better than that stupid exaggerated Neken accent "Queen Gwenin made the rebels move into the mountains. She said it was safer. _I_ think she's gotten tired of playing nursemaid to a bunch of babies without mommy or daddy."

Anisa rolled her eyes. She knew Sigon; she knew his opinions.

"Sevrea, you need to choose your side."

"I oppose Gareth; is that not enough?"

"The southern rebels want to unify us. Gwenin wants to unify us. I want Odden independent."

"I know you do. But the first priority is to dethrone Gareth." Sigon's mouth quirked. "And if that means uniting with the South, I will support that."

He stood up. "You're not from here. You're from Ellemera. Those southern people think it's all fancy clothes and spices that they can bring to us backward northerners. We have our own traditions, our own nobility. Y'all are all stomping over us – Gareth Ethieon, Gwenin Teset, all of you! You don't respect us!"

Anisa sighed. Sigon's real accent only came out when he got upset, and she refused to go down that path again. "Any other news?"

Sigon took a deep breath. "Oddenstown called up the militias; the governor's offering parley. There's a minor rebellion in Algenes – Temera's governor called for troops from Sagreda to put it down." Sigon picked up a book from his bookshelf and inspected it. "Sofel was burned to the ground last week. It's the last village before the Spine," he explained. "Looks like raiders. There's been rumors of a Rider in the area for years, though. Two more merchant caravans from Elera were lost in Ellemera's desert, but Ethieon blamed it on Menen. He moved two armies to the forts bordering Menen; Queen Gwenin has called her militias in response."

Anisa digested the information. "Do you have any medic kits?" she finally asked. Sigon turned to face her with a curious expression. "Gideon has been having breathing problems again. I'm not a good healer."

"You risked – you snuck past the largest of the King's garrisons – because your little boy has a _cough_?"

"The kit."

Sigon gave her the kit; she gave him three hiding spells for his news.

Anisa returned to the camp two minutes before Gideon.

* * *

Gideon sat in front of the fire across from his mother and watched her murmur spells. She hated scrying, and Gideon was smart enough to understand how desperate that made her – how desperate that made them all. He was also observant enough to notice that she went into Temersos while he collected the herbs.

Anisa stared in to the bowl. The bits of ash floated to the edges of the bowl; after them, the rosemary. The images made no sense. The crushed sage sank to the bottom. Anisa had said the wrong spells.

Gideon's mother cursed and overturned the bowl, rather forcefully.

"What did you see?" he asked.

Anisa scowled. "Nothing."

Dead people, she meant. All his mother ever saw when she scryed was dead people.

She retrieved the bowl and tossed another log into the fire. Gideon went to check on his traps and found three rabbits and a squirrel. The squirrel he let go.

* * *

Anisa watched Gideon fall asleep, like she did every night. She sang him the three songs she knew and told him the story of his namesake. She didn't tell him why he was named after Gideon Kerat, though.

Once she knew he was asleep, she worked quickly. She crushed the rest of the sage and collected the oil, added the liquid poppy syrup from Sigon's medic kit, and refilled the bowl with water. She chanted the spells again and poured drops of sage-poppy mixture into the bowl.

The last time she did this, Gideon had been four and had nightmares after for weeks.

Anisa continued to chant quietly, but changed the spells. She felt the bowl burn in her hands. She watched the fire spread to her arms and closed her eyes when it covered her face. Fire scrying was dangerous but more effective, and her protective spells usually held.

Dead people. She still saw dead people. And dead places, burned to the ground or ruined for millennia. Dead animals, dead bodies, charred and eaten. Blood everywhere. Iron and steel and death.

When Gideon awoke the next morning, Anisa already had the oatmeal cooking over the fire. That was a treat. "We're moving," she announced.

"Where?"

"The Spine."


End file.
